


i might be driven (to sell your love for peace)

by Kaywinnit



Category: Cracked.com, Cracked: After Hours
Genre: Drama, Families of Choice, Family, Feels, Gen, M/M, Self-Hatred, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 15:10:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3614520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaywinnit/pseuds/Kaywinnit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It would be hard to live your entire life with someone and not be at least somewhat fond of them. That is what Dan has heard, anyway, but he suspects most people who have grown up with people they have come to begrudgingly care for do not know Michael." </p><p>Michael and Dan drink to memories of the past, think about the present, and talk about the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i might be driven (to sell your love for peace)

**Author's Note:**

> So this was partially inspired by humon on DeviantArt with her fanart of Cracked After Hours, as well as a screenshot of Daniel O'Brien saying his character and Soren's are accidentally falling in love. I enjoy the subtext in the story a great deal, and the behind the scenes drama is really quite fascinating.
> 
> Apparently it is speculated that Dan and Michael are long-time family friends, and grew up with each other. I based their relationship off the childhood friends interpretation, though obviously very little of what Dan remembers about their childhood is based in canon and more just what I added to round them out a little.
> 
> The title comes from a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay, called "Love is not all".
> 
> "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink  
> Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;  
> Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink  
> And rise and sink and rise and sink again;  
> Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,  
> Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;  
> Yet many a man is making friends with death  
> Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.  
> It well may be that in a difficult hour,  
> Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,  
> Or nagged by want past resolution's power,  
> I might be driven to sell your love for peace,  
> Or trade the memory of this night for food.  
> It well may be. I do not think I would."

It would be hard to live your entire life with someone and not be at least somewhat fond of them. That is what Dan has heard, anyway, but he suspects most people who have grown up with people they have come to begrudgingly care for do not know Michael. Michael, who is loud, rude, in-your-face, gore-obsessed and multisexual, is not most people. 

But still, Dan has some affection for him. Michael was his best and only friend for so long, the one who drew him out of his shell, and was always irritatingly upbeat, even though his life, objectively, was much harder than Dan’s. Poorer, with an absent family, and a much longer climb to the top than Dan, and yet, in his own Michael way, he manages to not be bitter over it. 

They are sitting on the worn-down couch in Dan’s living room, rewatching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Michael is hogging the nachos, so Dan has confiscated the popcorn. Dan has an open bottle of bottom-shelf red wine and has drunk enough of it that his head is spinning and his stomach is rolling. Michael is on his third can of beer. It is a scene they have re-enacted a thousand times by now, but sometimes it still startles Dan to think that there is someone out there who would want to do this with him. 

So when Michael leans over and pauses the show right in the middle of Leonardo jump-kicking a bad guy, Dan is a little shocked by the deviation from the script. Michael looks a little haggard, a little worn in a way he usually hides. It is only because Dan has known him for so long than he notices it normally, but now even a stranger on the street would be able to see the faded sadness that drags on Michael’s features. 

“Michael?” Dan asks slowly. “Are you alright?” 

Michael glances over at him, and there is a flicker of profound confusion mingled with impossible sadness that comes and goes from his face so quickly that Dan might have imagined it. Michael can be dumb, occasionally, but it is different from how he once was, and Dan has wondered if he has realized it. As a child, Michael was loud, and a little inappropriate at times, but he was sharp as a razor, perceptive and bright. In math class in fourth grade, they had timed minutes to fill out multiplication sheets. Michael breezed through those. He got a gold star sticker for that, once, and he won the spelling bee when they were eleven. So the new vacantness is out of place, suspicious, so very different from the vibrant, whip-smart boy who dragged Dan along on adventures once upon a time, a long time ago. 

“Daniel,” Michael says, his voice a little unsure, “Where do you think my mind has gone?”

That answers that question. He has known Michael too long and cares too much to lie, and anyway, he defaults to honesty when he’s drunk. “I don’t know,” Dan replies. “But I don’t think it’s just you. Katie and Soren both say things, or forget things, that seem a little weird. Something is happening.”

Dan does not know why things would happen to them, though. Or really, why things would happen around him specifically. In an action movie, he would be the neutral-mask character for the audience to slide their imaginations into and wear him like a coat - the bland, featureless character that is only there to be a placeholder for the dreams of the viewers. Michael is too quirky and full of life, with a grin and a story or a prank at all times. Katie is sophisticated and geeky in a socially acceptable way, charming and pretty. Soren is beautiful and talented, in ways Daniel doubts his words would be able to capture fully. They would be the supporting characters that everyone quotes and strives to be, and they are the stars in their own lives. 

Dan is just himself, and that is not enough to inspire anything, let alone whatever it is that could be happening to his nearest and dearest friends. 

“I sometimes feel like I’ve dropped part of myself, somewhere,” Michael says quietly. “Dunno where, though. That piece of me has probably been picked up, anyway.” He fiddles with his can of beer, rips the tab off. It is a nervous habit he developed when they were kids. He tears the cans up when they are empty, twists them until he can peel off strips of metal that quiver like contemporary art. When they were thirteen, he cut his hand on the edge of one of his ripped-up cans and Dan’s mother had to take him to the Emergency Room. Michael’s parents never showed. 

“Michael, what brought this on?” 

Michael shrugs, and crushes the bottom of his can. Dan hopes it’s empty. He has had to clean out the carpet too many times after Michael got excited and forgot his own strength, or what he was holding. “I dunno. I can feel those pieces, though, or at least where they should be. It’s more obvious when I’m drunk.” His smile is a little sad, so different from the Michael Dan has known long enough to think of as his brother. “I think we’ve got some kind of spell cast on us. The type you need a Disney prince to break.”

“Well, sorry, fresh out of those.”

“I always forget you’re a smartass,” Michael says fondly. 

Dan smiles uncomfortably, and shifts in the couch - it is so old and well-used that it molds to their shapes, and is impossible to escape at times. “I wish I could help you,” he says, because he does. Michael is as good as being his family, and whatever is happening to him is affecting the others too. But Dan is nothing special, not the One or the Chosen, and there is probably nothing he can do to change the path they are all on. 

“So what’s up with you and Soren?” Michael asks, and the shift in topic is so abrupt and quintessentially Michael that Dan feels dizzy for a moment and almost chokes on the sip of wine he has just taken - although that might just be the wine’s inherent low quality mixed with Dan’s inability to develop any sort of alcohol tolerance.

Michael pounds his back as Dan coughs, lungs aching, heart beating out a samba - possibly. Dan does not actually know what samba music sounds like. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he wheezes. 

“Sure you do,” Michael says. “He stares at you a lot, and laughs at your dumb impressions, and you get weird and mopey when he ignores you. I only bring it up because Katie and I have a bet going on when you two’ll get together. Do it by April or I’ll be out fifty bucks - and I’ll have to watch those super weird and arty movies Katie likes so much with her. I hate those movies. She’s probably going to pick the one without sex too.” 

Soren is complicated. 

Or how Dan thinks about him is complicated, anyway, largely because Dan does not know how he should feel about Soren. Soren is an asshole, but he is a charming, kind, sweet one, who really only became an asshole in self-defense. The world expects him to be a jackass, so he became one - rich, good-looking, athletic Soren, with the world at his fingertips. He is the type of person who has always wanted nothing to do with sort of person Dan is, and there are moments where Soren reacts like people like him have always reacted towards Dan, and he kind of despises it when those moments happen. 

But there are hints of something quieter, darker, deeper, moments when Dan can tell that the mask Soren wears is just that. Cracks in the facade that show Soren’s kindness, compassion, his fears and phobias, on display for them to see. It is in the moments when he can feel Soren looking at him, and not looking away, or when Soren laughs - laughs honestly, and not out of cruelty or mocking - and when Soren sits there, just listening. He is surprisingly geeky and astonishingly unsure at times, looking for someone’s approval and acceptance, even though most of the world would fall at his feet if he snapped his fingers, and he is such a mess of contradictions that it is sometimes difficult to know who he is under it all. 

Dan does not really know what he thinks about Soren, but he knows he loves him. 

It’s complicated. 

“It’s not going to happen,” Dan says, and Michael snorts. “No, Michael, it won’t. And don’t try to do any matchmaking; I don’t trust you with that.”

“Mean,” Michael huffs, “And I helped you get your prom date, remember? I’m a matchmaking god.”

“She agreed to go out with me to get you to stop bugging her. I barely even spoke to her. We didn’t dance at all.”

“Yeah, but you still had a date. You’re welcome. Again.”

Arguing with Michael is a lot like arguing with a self-satisfied brick wall at the best of times. “Yeah, well, thanks, I guess.” He is really hoping this will be the end of the conversation. Soren takes up too much of his mind anyway, and sometimes Dan just wants to rip out the parts of him that warm up and flutter happily when Soren is involved. Soren is a bit like a parasite, because Dan can feel the thought of him eating away at his mind, making him weak in the knees and a little bit dumber every time it happens - but Dan also does not mind it. The opposite, really, but sometimes it is easier to ignore it than to try to cope with the ache in his chest every time he thinks of Soren, and how impossible it all is. 

“I’m just saying that you two need to stop mooning over each other and give each other handjobs in the parking lot. Or the bedroom, whatever. Air’ll be easier to breathe without all that sexual tension.”

He’ll have to steam-clean the red wine he just spat everywhere out of the carpet in the morning, and should probably stop drinking the moment Michael opens his mouth. Dan wipes at the trail of liquid running down his chin, and tries not to splutter. “Wh-Michael, no, it’s not going to happen. Ever.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s _Soren_ ,” Dan says helplessly, “And I’m just me.”

Soren, who is gorgeous and talented and has men and women falling left and right for him and his stupid crooked smile. Dan can hardly talk to the waitress when it’s time to order dinner, and tends to go monosyllabic stupid when stressed out. It is an impossibility on the level of someone thinking that the Matrix Reloaded is a good movie, or Tim Burton making a film without Johnny Depp. 

“Yeah, and Soren loves you for you. It’s pretty obvious. Was your brain replaced by a rock and that’s why you haven’t noticed?”

Dan stares at him, mouth hanging open. Michael shrugs one shoulder. “It’s true. Anyway. Why is the TV paused? Leonardo’s in the middle of being all awesome.” He hits the play button, and the cartoon lurches forward. 

Michael settles back into the story easily, popping open his fourth beer and snorting with laughter as Donatello joins the fray, but Dan feels unsettled, unsure.

Too much is happening, and Dan is a background character, an extra. He’s nothing important, nothing special. He doesn’t get the confessions in the rain, or the boy that everyone else wants. Michael is wrong about Soren, and Dan’s brother is falling to pieces and he has no idea why. 

He settles back and tries to ignore his lingering sense of dread and the ache in his heart as he drains the rest of his bottle of wine.


End file.
